Thursday, April 17, 2014

The GOP should have gone RTL instead of NRA. Bad call.
by digby

Greg Sargent has a story about the GOP starting to have a wee problem in their districts over Obamacare:

Asked by a constituent why he thinks repealing Obamacare’s protections is a good idea, Rep. Ross replies: “I don’t.” Though Ross has repeatedly voted to repeal the law, he cites his own health reform alternative – which includes well known Republican ideas like HSAs and mechanisms for “temporary” coverage for people with preexisting conditions – and laments that the GOP has not coalesced behind a comprehensive alternative. He says:

“I think one of the most unfortunate things my party did the last three years was not offer an alternative to health care…I wish we had an alternative. For the next six months, we’re going to go into an election, knowing that we’re not going to do anything to address health care. Because we’ve gone so far in the last few years saying No, that we don’t have an alternative to say Yes to. And I think that the American public, when they go to vote, are going to look at credibility before they look at substance.”

They made a mistake. They adopted the NRA all or nothing strategy when they should have adopted the "pro-life" death-by-a-thousand-cuts strategy. If they had just chosen a few elements to deride instead of barking about 'repeal" every five minutes they'd have something to work with. After all, many elements of the reforms are things they should, by all rights, be in favor of. Since they are not required to set forth any policies or programs that make any sense or have the possibility of working the way they say they will they could have initiated a strategy of picking it apart while still being in favor of "reform."

In fact, that's undoubtedly where they will go with all this. After all, refusing the Medicaid expansion has been a huge success. They can be the instruments that hurt poor people while telling them that it's Obamacare's fault. Win, win.

Probably the smartest thing the president's team did was adopt their pejorative "Obamacare" as their own. That made the right wingers lose their heads --- how could they accept any part of the ACA if it had Satan's name attached?